I'm The Oldest Of Four ... Which Is Why I Only Want Two Kids

I'm The Oldest Of Four ... Which Is Why I Only Want Two Kids

I'm The Oldest Of Four ... Which Is Why I Only Want Two Kids

My fiance and I would rather travel and live our lives than have tons of children.

Even though my fiance and I are still months away from walking down the aisle, the inevitable question has already come up: When are we going to have kids? This is totally exacerbated by the fact that my younger sister just had a baby in April, and in some cases, the question is annoyingly accusatory (as in, how dare you let your little sister have a baby before you?)

As a 23-year-old with pretty extensive world-travel goals and a life partner who is more than willing to tag along, I usually evade the question with a vague "we're still young" type of remark (I'm not even old enough to rent a car!)

There's no way I'm trekking through the Andes with a baby in tow — I'm already amazed at the super-patient parents who lug their Maclaren strollers up and down the NYC subway stairs. Now that's dedication. I'm Planning My Dream Wedding In Three Months!

While my fiancé and I have no plans of conceiving any time soon, we've definitely discussed how many kids we want. An article about family size on Parenting.com made me realize that our "dream" baby numbers have significantly gone down since we first started dating. Thankfully, we've been on the same page about this from Day 1: The first number was around five or more (uhhh, what were we thinking?!) Of course back then, we had no idea of what it meant to live on our own, let alone what it would do to our lives to have five kids (no more spontaneous weekend rendezvous!)

While I don't think there is a blanket baby-number ceiling, I do think that would-be parents should consider what kind of lifestyle they want and plan their baby number accordingly. I'm the oldest of four, and while there are good things about having a large family, I have definitely noticed that my parents' lives seem to revolve around us, as they have been for almost a quarter of a century. That's something my fiancé and I can't imagine — we agree that while we want to have a baby some day, alone time is not something we want to give up for that long.

Now, our number is around two. We both want one boy and one girl, and I always say that I'll go for number three if I don't get that girl (and I'll make sure of it via fertilization treatment).

How many kids do you want? Is there a magic number for the right amount of kids?